


I Think I Could Turn & Live With Animals

by Cheerful_Clatter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Friends to Lovers, Married Life, Married Sex, Not Epilogue Compliant, Veterinarian Luna Lovegood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 17:39:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16978992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheerful_Clatter/pseuds/Cheerful_Clatter
Summary: It wasn't where Harry had expected to be, but it was where he needed to be - because Luna was there, and she wanted him there.





	I Think I Could Turn & Live With Animals

Harry wasn't quite sure what had brought him to Luna's door. He supposed he had gone to her, rather than to any of his other friends, simply because she was the most serene and least judgmental person he knew, and also the best listener. Admittedly, he hadn't seen her for quite some time after Hogwarts, as their lives had moved in different directions since then. Everyone knew that Luna loved animals, and it was generally assumed that she wanted to be a magizoologist and an explorer. However, once she'd begun studying magizoology in further depth, she took a turn toward learning the healing arts instead. Several years later, she had gained recognition for her skills in caring for injured and orphaned animals, both magical and otherwise. What had begun as a small clinic nestled away in the Scottish Highlands was now a sprawling sanctuary which, despite its isolated location, brought in wizards and witches seeking assistance from all over Britain. Although Luna was definitely still seen as eccentric - both through her own behavior and the reputation of her family's name - she was also well-respected for her kind, gentle nature and her wide knowledge of anatomy and medicine.

Harry, too, had not quite become what people had expected him to be. Although he had seemed well-suited for Auror training, the program had proven to bring up too many bad memories for him. As pleased as he was that he had defeated Voldemort, Harry also realized that he needed to live a quieter, more peaceful life than that of an Auror. After dropping out of the program, he briefly spent some time helping Hermione run a second-hand bookshop in Diagon Alley, but the job still wasn't far enough away from unwanted publicity. And so, seeking calm, he had eventually made his way to Luna, even though he didn't know what he was going to find. Both of them were single but not inexperienced: Harry had dated Ginny for a while before her Quidditch career had made it too difficult for them to spend much time together, and Luna had a brief fling with Rolf during their zoology studies, before he had gone off exploring without her.

As Luna answered the door, Harry couldn't help but feel the same affection he remembered feeling for her in school. Somehow, though, she looked more beautiful than he had remembered, for a reason he couldn't quite describe. There seemed to be more sunlight in her face - possibly the result of a life now spent largely outdoors - which placed more emphasis on her familiar blonde hair, still as long and unruly as he recalled it being. When Harry asked her if he could have a place to stay, she raised no objection and said he could stay for as long as he wanted. Her only request, since she ran her sanctuary all by herself, was that he assist her with work every day. In the beginning, this consisted mainly of feeding animals and cleaning up after them, but to Harry's surprise, he didn't find the work objectionable. The scenery was beautiful, and the animals were quite pleasant to interact with - especially once Luna had introduced them all to him. She trusted him right away, and soon enough was asking him to aid with more medical tasks: splinting broken legs on dogs, lambs, and thestrals; dressing wounds on rabbits and nifflers... Luna was the best teacher he'd ever had, in part because she saw him as equally capable as her despite the fact that she had years of advanced training and he had stopped taking Care of Magical Creatures after his fifth year.

After he had stayed there a month and the weather had gotten colder, Luna asked Harry in her usual forthright manner if he wanted to stop using the cramped spare room and sleep in her soft, warm bed instead. Harry briefly hesitated, but knew she wouldn't ask him to do anything she wasn't comfortable with. As they climbed in under the blankets, Harry's initial plan was to huddle up with Luna for warmth, but holding her soon led to mutual caressing, which led to covering each other's faces with kisses. Not wanting to cross a line and fearing he had stepped too far already, Harry asked Luna for her consent for wherever else this was going to lead, and Luna granted it. They undressed each other from the waist up, at which point Luna, feeling impatient, undid the button of his pajama pants followed by the button of his undershorts. She smiled at the sight of his erect penis emerging - it was an absolutely delightful size and shape, by her assessment - and gently stroked it until he spurted into her hand. By morning, Harry was erect again, so they removed the rest of their clothes, after which Luna spread her legs and permitted him to thrust inside her until he once again achieved release.

A month turned into several months, and by year's end they'd surprised everyone by getting married. One year of marriage turned into two, then five, then ten. As their friends grew older, got married, and in some cases had children, Harry continued to be at peace alone with Luna and surrounded by all the various animals that came through her care. He never had any children with Luna, although their friends kept expecting it to happen. Luna supposed she wasn't able to have children, but never felt any sort of emptiness because of it. After all, she still had her Harry: strong, handsome, kind Harry. Not the Harry who had defeated Voldemort, but just ordinary Harry - the person she'd always seen him as, even back when they were teenagers. Perhaps it helped that Luna lived where she did, but the press was even willing to leave him alone, despite the occasional reference here and there to his reclusiveness in the paper.

Even though he knew Luna loved him, Harry was fully aware that animals were her first love. He had been slightly startled the very first time he had seen her at work: while he remembered a girl at school who had been somewhat distant and distracted at times, the woman now in front of him was intensely attentive on a level he had previously only witnessed when watching Hermione do homework. When Luna was with an animal, she would sometimes seem to forget that he was in the room until she suddenly addressed him and asked for his assistance. But Harry never felt neglected: the longer he was with Luna, the more he realized how highly intelligent she was. He supposed she drowned out everything around her so that she could sort out the hundreds of ideas running through her head at any given moment. She told him that was the reason why she so often cast her wand aside and used non-magical healing methods: she'd learned that the simplest techniques weren't always the best, and going through an entire process step-by-step, rather than taking a shortcut, helped her to clear her head.

The saddest moments in their lives were when an animal died despite Luna's attempts to heal it. Harry would always cry, but Luna maintained her composure, pressed the animal's eyelids closed if they weren't already, and then led her husband to a place where they could dig a grave together. As upsetting as these experiences were, they did serve to remind Harry of how good Luna always had been at facing death. She was better at it than him, he supposed - but on the other hand, maybe it was the fact that he actually knew what it felt like to die that made him feel empathy for the dying animals. He wondered if there was a train station for dead animals that would take them to wherever those trains went, and he imagined that if Luna had the choice, that would be what she would want to do after she died: guide the animals along and help them find their way.

On certain weekend mornings while they were cuddling in bed, Luna enjoyed reaching down into Harry's clothes, encircling her soft hand around his penis, feeling it stiffen, and then coaxing it until it finally released its essence in a series of pulses. It may have been her knowledge of anatomy that motivated her, or just her love for every part of her husband, but Luna did have a silent fascination with Harry's genitals. They frequently showered together in the morning, and the fact that this interaction was never sexual in nature allowed Luna to see him nude in a different setting. Instead of standing straight up, as it did during their amorous activities, his penis amusingly hung down and flopped around, reminding Luna of a baby elephant. While she washed herself up, she would often cast a sidelong glance at Harry's somewhat elaborate cleaning process: moving his washcloth-covered hand over his shaft, carefully pulling his foreskin back to take care of the tip, and then concluding by holding his penis up with one hand so he could wash his scrotum and, once a month, roll each testicle between his fingers to check for cancer.  _An elephant trunk guarding a bag with two eggs,_ Luna would think with a smirk, and would chuckle to herself whenever the thought crossed her mind.

Luna developed an interest in Muggle literature, much to her own and Harry's surprise. At night, once she'd finished caring for her animals and set up all the magical alarms in case there was an emergency, she and Harry would curl up by the fire and read a novel, play, or book of poetry together. Harry enjoyed Charles Dickens because he identified with his orphan protagonists, while Luna had a preference for tales of adventure by Dumas and Walter Scott. Harry didn't always understand Yeats or James Joyce, but he loved hearing Luna read them because her slight Irish accent tended to make the authors' work sound more beautiful. By far their favorite poet, however, was Walt Whitman: Luna loved the fact that he was so wild, open, and free, wrote about the beauty of nature, and was willing to address any subject, no matter how inappropriate it seemed. In her spare time, she began writing poetry of her own, which Harry also loved to hear - even if she had a tendency to write rather private things about him.

Some nights, Harry would take Luna over to the university in the nearest city to hear a lecture - sometimes on literature, sometimes on religion, sometimes on world cultures - and he loved the experience even though he had to keep an eye on her at first. Luna didn't have as much experience in the Muggle world as Harry did, so he wanted to make sure she stayed safe and didn't say the wrong thing to anybody - although she became more well-versed in etiquette with each new outing, which made Harry feel increasingly comfortable letting her be on her own. She was utterly enthralled by her first trip to a movie theater, but rather than having the outburst that Harry feared, Luna instead stayed in her seat and stared at the screen with rapt attention. By the movie's end, she was convinced that Muggles had created their own form of magic, and wanted to go see another movie the next time one played. As they walked back to the nearest spot where they could Apparate home, occasionally stopping so that he could plant a kiss on her cheek, Harry felt no regrets about where his life had taken him since knocking on Luna's door. It wasn't where Harry had expected to be, but it was where he needed to be - because Luna was there, and she wanted him there.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you liked it. If it seemed a bit short, rushed, and/or scattered, that's because I was aiming for a vignette-style story and I wanted to experiment with a prose style that didn't involve dialogue. Your feedback - praise and criticism alike - is both welcomed and encouraged.
> 
> The story's title, as some of you possibly guessed, is from Walt Whitman. The legal rights to Harry Potter books and characters of course belong to J. K. Rowling; my story idea is my own intellectual property.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


End file.
